Why Shakespeare would have been a failure in India

The first day of my arrival in Mumbai about eight years ago has been one of the most important days of my life for many reasons, but the most important one is this — sweating profusely in the scorching heat of summer and desperately trying to hail a cab while balancing a precarious number of bags on my shoulders, I found myself very angry at Shakespeare, and in that moment of anger I was finally able to understand him in context.

I never really got Shakespeare, and in high-school I lived in constant anxiety that I’ll be found out for my lack of getting Shakespeare.

Take the over-promoted Sonnet 18 for instance. Since my early school days, I have read it in about a hundred different anthologies. And how does it start? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

To quote Hamlet Act III, Scene III, Line 87,

NO!

Honestly, who in his right mind would like to compare his darling love, more temperate or not, to a brutal summer’s day in India? Well, the middle aged husband might do that to his wife, particularly in light of the lines that follow — but thy eternal summer shall not fade. But what does a budding high school romantic like me think? Well, I am thanking the lord almighty that … summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Honestly, who in his right mind would like to compare his darling love, more temperate or not, to a brutal summer’s day in India?

Looking back, it was amusing that in that chaotic moment I found the time to think of Sonnet 18 and become angry at Shakespeare, but I suppose that is when I understood how to go about getting Shakespeare. Truly. Just close your eyes and imagine yourself in one of those places in Hollywood movies with soft morning sunshines or bitter howling cold or an endless meadow of daisies (we’ll talk about murder, mayhem and suicides some other day).

All of this leads me to assert that in the absence of Hollywood movies, Shakespeare would have been a complete failure in India in his own time.